12.14.2014

When I remember my Grandma G, I remember a woman who liked dancing and having good time. Not for her the domesticity of the kitchen, which is a little odd, because I must have eaten at her house quite a lot as a child. I remember many meals of dinners of meatloaf with brown gravy, canned vegetables, and instant mashed potatoes. And picnics with hot dogs and canned baked beans -- the kind that had the chunk of ham fat in it -- and potato salad covered in slices of hard-cooked eggs.

And lemon meringue pie. My Grandma G had a terrible sweet tooth. Doughnuts, snack cakes, ice cream, chocolates -- she loved them all. But she didn't bake much. Except that lemon meringue pie. My father remembers a six month period in which she was always baking bread, but that stopped as abruptly as it started and was a distant memory by the time I came along to eat ham and cheese sandwiches in her kitchen. Mostly, my Grandma kept her kitchen well stocked with Hostess and Entenmann products. And she was generous -- never turned up at anyone else's home without a box of cherry cheese danish or frosted doughnuts.

But the lemon meringue pie. That she baked. And it was lemony and light and as perfect as lemon meringue pie can be.

So. I thought, this weekend being the second anniversary of her death, I'd bake a lemon meringue pie. Can't bake Grandma G's pie, because I don't have the recipe, so I used the recipe in my red-and-white plaid Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. It's more likely she found hers on the back of a cornstarch or sugar container. Or the newspaper. She was always clipping things from the newspaper.

My pie was both a little burnt and slightly runny, but that's okay. Memories of her pie give me something to strive for. A measuring stick against which to measure all other lemon meringues. And, yes, maybe the pie I remember is better than that pie ever really was, but that's fine. We polish the best memories until they are diamonds and forget or forgive the rest.

7.25.2014

My father did some work for us recently and I promised him payment in cash and pie. While he ultimately refused the cash, he was happy to receive a pie. Because this pie was meant for Dad and only Dad, I knew I wanted to make a banana cream pie as he loves bananas, but my mom is allergic and unable to bake him one. There are, frankly, too many recipes for banana cream pie loose in the world but I finally settled on Taste of Home's recipe for "Blueberry Banana Cream Pie." For me, blueberries and banana go well together as the tart brightness of the berries balances the sweet creaminess of the banana. Also, my dad loves blueberries!

The pie was quite easy to make, but I had to go and complicate it by opting to use a "real" pie crust (a Marie Callender frozen deep-dish crust) rather than the vanilla wafers called for as I thought wafers would make it too much like a deep-dish pudding and less like the pie I wanted it to be. Also, I chose to ignore the filling amounts called for in the recipe and use the amounts recommended by the commenters ... creating much more filling than would fit in my deep-dish crust!

Happily, Dad loved the pie and I will have to make it again. Next time, I will use a single 8-oz package of cream cheese instead of the 2 8-oz commenters recommended or the 2 6-oz called for in the recipe to see if that creates a slightly more stable filling (mine was mostly-firm-but-slightly-goopy) and maybe add a little lime zest. Or I might just try Taste of Home's "Creamy Banana-Berry Pie" with crushed pecans rolled into the crust!

Welcome

Hi, thanks so much for stopping by! I’m Lynn: reader, cook, gardener of weeds, ostomate, bisexual, cat lady, and librarian. I consistently borrow too many library books, have yet to choose a healthy bedtime, and believe ice cream for lunch is the adulthood we all deserve. My preferred pronouns are she/her.